Ethics, Morals, & Values


25
Oct 10

Iran Shuttles University Curricula

As a nominal democracy (keyword: nominal), Iran isn’t high on my list of desirable nations, at least not as far as the government is concerned.  Imagine my consternation as I stumbled across a report from the AP outlining Iran’s new restructuring of social sciences programs deemed as inconsistent with Islamic law (ie, derived from Western principles of thought):

The list includes law, philosophy, management, psychology, political science and the two subjects that appear to cause the most concern among Iran’s conservative leadership — women’s studies and human rights.

No new programs in the listed areas will be accepted in Iranian universities, and current programs are to be severely revised by the government.

Go figure.  Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can’t like the fact that a cross-section of relatively well-educated young liberals drove the anti-government protests last year, and what better way to squelch dissent than to restrict access to scholastic disciplines the Supreme Leader and President view as threatening to their regime?

Say what you will about the United States (and trust me, I have a veritable slue of castigations for our own government), we will likely never see something like this happen in our country, Christine O’Donnell’s eventual rise to the presidency notwithstanding.  Then again, what a low bar to set for a nation.

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2
Sep 10

Abdul Rashid Dostum, One Hell of a Right Hand

A paragraph this good -and by good I mean packed with information that most people don’t know- just needs top be shared.  Notice the area that I bolded..

The inner circle includes but is not limited to the Hazara Vice President, Karim Khalili; Kabir Mohabat, an Afghan with American citizenship; “Marshal” and now Vice President Muhammad Qasim Fahim, a Tajik; and “Marshal” Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who disdains any government post but is the President’s “right hand.” (Dostum deserves an Olympic gold medal for opportunism. A leader of the Uzbek people of the North, he fought the Russians, then joined them to fight the insurgents; then he joined the insurgency to fight the Russians; next he joined the Taliban; then he switched sides again to join the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” and is infamous for suffocating in steel lift vans in the sweltering summer captured Taliban soldiers. Now – for how long? – he is a supporter of President Karzai.) It also includes Zara Ahmad Mobil who ran what is regarded as the most corrupt organization in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Interior, and (as an editorial in The Guardian put it) “is now in charge of the opium industry;” and, of course, the Karzai family. [Source, first paragraph on the page.]

My reaction to this was to read the paragraph three times in a row.  Sit back and think about it for a a few seconds, then read it a forth time. 

I can’t make up someone that shady!  And yet… Un-fucking-believable. 

Time to get some lunch.

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1
Sep 10

Long Term Human Security Should Be the Focus

~Point One: Complex problems are hard to solve~

In a world where wars are being fought between nongovernmental groups (drug cartels, insurgencies, fundamentalist groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, etc.) the major powers of the globe need to rethink how to achieve meaningful and sustained victories rather than short term (politically advantageous) victories.

The thing about the sort of victories that I believe the United States and Europe need to focus on is that they require a huge investment upfront, which is exactly the kind of investment elected officials are — more often than not — unwilling finance.  The “global economic downturn,” or whatever today’s economic woes are being called now, make such an investment even less likely.

In other (my own) words: In order to establish a period of time where citizens of the West and the world will be more secure requires that the West take on complex problems that  don’t have any silver bullet solutions.  Said complex problems will take a lot of time, energy, and money to solve.

A  recent FPIF review of the book The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon, by Mary Kaldor and Shannon D. Beebe has convinced me that, at the very least, other people are thinking about this as well.  The review states…

According to Kaldor and Beebe, the West needs a paradigm shift in how it views security when contending with global crises and terrorism. They argue that because poverty, limited political rights, or threats of physical violence drive insurgencies and violence, the United States and Europe should not emphasize “defeating enemies,” but rather prioritize the economic, political, and physical needs and rights of people, namely human security. Then and only then will the West achieve a truly sustainable security for itself and countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq.

The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon is a guide for Western policy-makers and activists on how to form what the authors call global civilian-military “engagement brigades,” which would specialize in enhancing physical security and political and economic development. These brigades would be deployed to conflict zones to implement a multilateral human security approach, as opposed to the conventional unilateral military response.

As I talk about these ideas with people who I work with many of them say that this is a “good idea” but that it has “never been tried before.”  That simply is not true.  Taking the longer and initially more expensive road which seaks to create human security by developing the economy and infrastructure of struggling nation states has not only been tried, it has worked remarkably well.

From the Wikipedia article on the Marshall plan that helped Europe recover after being ravaged by WW II…

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the primary program, 1947–51, of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Europe. The initiative was named for Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan. Marshall spoke of urgent need to help the European recovery in his address at Harvard University in June 1947.[1]

The reconstruction plan, developed at a meeting of the participating European states, was established on June 5, 1947. It offered the same aid to the USSR and its allies, but they did not accept it.[2][3] The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. During that period some US $13 billion in economic and technical assistance were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. This $13 billion was in the context of a U.S. GDP of $258 billion in 1948, and was on top of $12 billion in American aid to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Plan that is counted separately from the Marshall Plan.[4]

The ERP addressed each of the obstacles to postwar recovery. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance.[5]

By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall plan recipients, output in 1951 was 35% higher than in 1938.[6] Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity, but economists are not sure what proportion was due directly to the ERP, what proportion indirectly, and how much would have happened without it. The Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of western Europe

Unfortunately people don’t really understand the Marshall pan as well as they think they do.  Be that as it may, it remains a strong data point in the arsenal of people who, like me, argue in favor of making the investments necessary to create human security.

~Point Two: The problem is the voting public~

When human security is not a priority and things go wrong people are often very quick to place blame on the shoulders of our elected officials, and sometimes that is indeed where they blame should be placed.  However, sometimes the blame needs to be placed on the shoulders of a greedy short sighted voting public.

Here is an analogy for you.  Picture the United States as a company.   The President is a CEO of sorts and the Congress is a bunch of department heads/managers.  The voting public are the shareholders.  Let’s say the CEO and the department heads say to the shareholders, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a plan that will create long term profits, but in order to get those long term profits we will need to lose money in the short term.”

I believe when something like this goes down what tends to happen is the shareholders say, “Did you say lose money?  FUCK THAT SHIT!  Dude, you are such a fucking asshole.  In fact you’re so much of an asshole that we need to seriously consider firing you.”

~Point Three: Thinking long term needs to be **the** subject of public discourse~

Outside of the ivory tower, no one really talks about long term thinking.  Why is that?  Seriously, it is not a rhetorical question.

Regardless of the answer, I believe that it is the responsibility of the intelligentsia, the wonks, and new media types to bring up thinking’s merits as often as humanly possible.

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26
Aug 10

More Thoughts on Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, and Nuclear Weapons

Over at The Atlantic there is an article  by Karim Sadadpor called “5 Minutes With Benjamin Netanyahu.”  In this article Sadadpor states:

With its own arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons — not to mention the unconditional support of the world’s greatest superpower — Israel needlessly elevates Iran by labeling it an “existential threat.”

I’ll grant that — given what seems to be public knowledge — calling Iran’s nuclear ambitions an “existential threat” may be somewat hyperbolic at this stage in the game, and I agree that the use of this term has elevated Iran’s actions.  However, I believe that elevating Iran is precisely what is called for due to reasons I have previously stated.

Sadadpor goes on to say…

Given that Israel’s underlying problem with Iran has more to do with the character of the revolutionary regime than with its nuclear ambitions (after all, Israel seems unconcerned about the Pakistani bomb), then the mathematics of an Israeli strike don’t make sense.

I wish to humbly disagree with this statement.  Iran’s relationship to the heavily armed Lebanon situated group Hezbollah (and visa-a-versa) makes Iran fundamentally different from Pakistan.  In addition, Iran’s dubious “democracy” is a far cry from the democracy which exists in Pakistan, as evidenced by the election of the late Benazir Bhutto, which is something that would not happen in Iran today.  i.e. Even if Ahmadinejad does lose an election, that does not mean he will stop being the President of Iran.

There are two points Sadapor makes that I do agree with.  The first, which I totally agree with, is that Iran’s nuclear program is costing its government lots of money and has yet to produce any nuclear weapon.  If this spending of money and getting nothing for it other than economic sanctions, the ill will of the rest of the world, and the threat of being bombed continues, the citizens of Iran and the “green movement” in particular can use it to motivate people to push Ahmadinejad out of power.

The second point I agree with, but I think it is important to point something out:

To put things in perspective, a $1 drop in oil prices is approximately $600 million in lost annual revenue for Iran. Military action that would send oil prices skyrocketing makes it far less costly for Iran to continue supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, not to mention expand the ranks of bassij militia and Revolutionary Guards who rule by terror.

This is indeed something that should, and I believe does, weigh heavily on the minds of decision makers in Israel.  My guess is that the Israelis are thinking along the lines of, “It stands to reason if Iran does get access to the protective umbrella having nuclear weapons provides, that umbrella will extend to Hezbollah, which will in turn be far more likely to start firing rockets into Isreal with greater frequency.”

So giving Iran more money to fund Hezbollah is much better than allowing Iranian access to nuclear weapons with which it would protect Hezbollah.

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26
Aug 10

Fundamentalism = “Lunacy on Stilts”

From the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, by Jeffery Goldberg.

The thinking of scriptural fundamentalists seems, to the secular-minded, or even to the sort of person like me who feels the constant presence of God in his life but does not believe Him to be partisan in His love, as lunacy on stilts.  It is also cruel beyond measure.  Fundamentalism is the thief of mercy.

What a great quote.

Some pages later Goldberg describes what he says, after being arrested in Gaza, during an interrogation by Arab who is accusing him of being a spy.  Goldberg insists that he is a journalist working on a story the possibility of Jews and Arabs coexisting in the same stretch of land.

I told him I thought that there must be a way to create on this narrow ledge of land a place for Jews and Muslims to live in peace, side by side, without perfect justice, but without murder, either.  Now, I know Jews better than I know Arabs.  I think the Jews –not all, God knows, but many– are readying themselves for this day.  But I don’t know about the Arabs.  There are people who tell me they know the answer, but I don’t trust these people.  In the Middle East, people who say the have the answers often don’t know the questions.  So what I’m doing (and if I keep talking without pause, maybe you’ll forget about torturing me, or at least give me m cell phone back, yes?) is searching for the right questions.

So far this books is filled with writing that is making me think, and making me want to keep reading.  Wow.

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26
Aug 10

The “Ground Zero Mosque” Is a Good Idea

From a wonderfully informative and thought provoking piece about the proposed Islamic cultural center (AKA the mosque at ground zero) titled “Can We Talk?” over at Foreign Policy In Focus:

The controversy du jour is whether an Islamic cultural center should be built a couple blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City. One side says that such a building would desecrate the memory of those who died on 9/11. The other side says that freedom of religion is a core value in this country. For me, the issue is a no-brainer. The center promotes inter-religious and intercultural dialogue, which is precisely what we need more of to prevent future attacks. As Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) rightly points out, “I appreciate the depth of emotions at play, but respectfully suggest that the presence of a mosque is only inappropriate near ground zero if we unfairly associate Muslim Americans with the atrocities of the foreign al-Qaida terrorists who attacked our nation.” The opponents of the center — with their “Islam is the enemy” posters — are as fundamentalist in their outlook as the jihadists they oppose.

My thoughts: saying that all followers of Islam are like al-Qaida is like saying that all christians are like the Puritans who put on the Salem witch trials.  There are similarities, but there are more differences.

What harm can come from engaging in a dialogue?  Not nearly as much as can (and I believe will) come if people of the various religions of the world and secular people  don’t start to talking and listening to one and other!  We could all benefit from the creation of a place where we can talk about what we believe, why we believe it, and how believing what we believe informs our actions and inactions.

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12
Aug 10

The Malcolm Effect

A Personal Story:

I work in a school where 100% of my students have what could be called, to use a highly politically correct term, ”behavior issues”.  As a result the administrators of this school are often creating plans to manage the behaviors of the students in such a way as to turn them away from negative social behaviors, and turn them towards pro-social behaviors.  These plans tend to be, in my opinion, be overly verbose and lacking in elegance.

When I’m lucky, which is not as often as I would like, they tell me about these plans before putting them into effect.

My response when these plans are presented to me is to…

1. Raise my hand, possibly move it around to assure that I have gotten the attention of the presenter.
2. Watch the presenter roll his/her eyes when they see my hand up, and graciously await for them to acknowledge that I should state the reason for my hand being raised.
3. When permission has been granted for me to speak I stand and say “WHAT ABOUT THE MALCOM EFFECT!?!” If I’m feeling punchy I’ll add, ”Don’t you see you have been spending so much time thinking about what you could do, that you never stopped to consider if you should even do it in the first place!”

My co-workers have grown to both hate and adore my typical response to the plans the administrators (sometimes) present to us.

You know about the Malcolm effect, right? Well just in case you don’t, let me explain it to you…

My Explanation:

There are simple systems and complex systems.  Simple systems, because they are simple, are (obviously) easy to predict, manage, and plan around.  One can normally prevent something from going wrong in a simple system, and when something does go wrong it can quickly be diagnosed and resources deployed to fix whatever the problem may be.

However, as a system becomes more complex (as it grows in size, steps, parts, spawns sub-systems, etc.) a few things happen…

1. The more complex a system becomes it also becomes harder for humans to predict how the system will behave. This in turn leads to difficulty in managment of the system.
2. The more complex a system (the more parts, steps, sub-systems, etc.) involved the greater the potential that something will break, or go wrong. i.e. the more parts there are, the greater the potential for one of those parts to malfunction.
3. When something goes wrong (when something breaks or there is some sort of malfunction) in a complex system it is more difficult to diagnose and (chances are) the greater the resources that are necessary to fix whatever has gone wrong.

In short: the more complex a system the more likely it is that something will go wrong, and that said something will go very wrong.

It should be obvious that people can’t plan for everything that can go wrong, but the more complex a sytem becomes the greater potential there is for something to go wrong, and it is more difficult to see (and thus more difficult to create contingency plans) for when a malfunction does (inevitably) occur.

[Side Note: I know this might be beating a dead horse, or preaching to the converted, but I just can't help myself... See the second law of thermo-fucking-dynamics!]

File:Carnot heat engine 2.svg

Ergo: There is a clear benefit to creating simple systems as opposed to complex systems.  Simple systems are easier to predict, maintain, and repair.

Do I think that a simple system should always be used?  No.  There are times when a complex system is necessary.  However, when those situations arise / have arised it is important… no VITAL… that we realize and recognize (rather than ignore) the inherent flaws of complex systems.

Or to put it another way, when working with / within a complex system never assume the system is perfect.  When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, realize that chances are your system is screwed up someplace.  Then start the difficult task of error detection and correction.  Gather data and use it to improve your system.  Also, remember that the best improvements move a system towards simplicity and away from complexity.

One Web Explanation States:

Pay attention and start the difficult process of diagnosis.

the malcolm effect states that small changes in a complex system can change rapidly and unpredictably.

ex. you are sitting on a shoreline and you see in the distance a storm coming slowly closer. It’s heading right for you. You see lightning flash out across the water and the waves come towards the shore at an increasingly violent rate. At this point the storm has two options. One would be that the storm would race straight towards shore and continue its rampage there which would seem to be the logical choice. Instead however, before the storm reaches land it changes it’s direction and shoots down the shoreline instead. This is the malcolm effect, you cannot predict how the storm will react because it is a large complex system dependent on very small changes that it encounters in the natural environment.

Other Links of Interest:

1. Economic Equilibrium, Chaos and the Malcolm Effect

2. The Malcolm Effect on Flickr.

3. Wikipedia on Dr. Ian Malcolm.

4. Wikipedia article on Chaos Theory.

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27
Jul 10

The Nature of Competition As Spiritual Hemorrhoid

So the Obama administration is presently hemorrhaging classified information courtesy of WikiLeaks, the Bush administration is doing so posthumously, the earth’s crust is hemorrhaging oil, and Tom Vilsack is simply battling an embarrassing case of hemorrhoids after/during the stress of the Shirley Sherrod debacle.  Those are the big stories at the moment, but in true form for a real live Twenty-First Century Narcissist, I’m not really thinking about all that right now.

Something terrible happened on Sunday at Dave & Buster’s… I lost.

In and of itself, losing is not a rarity in my life though I am, in general, more accustomed to winning.  But on Sunday evening, I lost in a big way.  I lost at everything.  Even now, my ego hasn’t restored itself, nor will the chasm be sated or filled by gobbling up Scrabble wins and cheap, trivial victories.  The merciless drubbings I received left me pithed like a dissected frog against a lab mat, immobile and dumb, twitching violently, wanting for an elusive victory at something, anything.

First, I absorbed two straight losses at what was essentially a free throw competition — something I don’t believe I’d ever lost until two nights ago — and then a demoralizing defeat at the Super Shot basketball game.  I was put away handily on the air hockey table by a score of 7-2, at the trivia board three straight times in a row, and I managed to die before my partner in two co-op campaigns on Terminator: Salvation and House of the Dead 4.  I am still surprised I avoided making a hellish scene and tearing some poor child’s arms off in a rabid, ego-fueled frenzy.  There is nothing that incites a petulant rage quite like the perturbation of the competitive spirit, and in my twenty-six years of competing at various events, I have never taken the prospect lightly, which has cost me more than one enjoyable evening playing Taboo or Risk with friends.  (The two remaining teams in a game of risk cannot enter into an alliance with the intention of ending the game in a truce when other armies have been exhausted.  The game must be played to the death.  The incident that spawned this aside happened nearly two years ago and serves as a cautionary tale to all Risk players that treaty restrictions must be stipulated before the game, and in the interest of competition, alliances should generally be disallowed.)  I did manage to win the Daytona racing game, but there isn’t much satisfaction in placing first when the difficulty is set to Easy, the transmission to Automatic, and the game itself is a subpar racer made by SEGA in 1994.

Whether this rage is the justifiable product of primate evolution or a pathetic shard of the male ego still buried in my amygdala (probably both), I almost never see the point in playing “for fun”.  Playing for fun is playing to win, and the fun comes as a by-product of real competition, not half-assed lollygagging through a novel activity.  I don’t want any mealy-mouthed “the fun is in the journey” platitudes either.  The journey isn’t fun unless you care about the destination, and if you don’t care about the destination, why take the journey?  This isn’t to say that I’m always an unreasonable loser, but most people who know will probably tell you that I’m certainly not a tranquil one.  I’d be loathe to disagree with them publicly and at the risk of self-delusion.

But that’s just one asshole’s opinion, a maligned philosophy that emanates from a severely wounded ego, and if you must know, while I’d been planning to post on the site for a few days now, the only reason I got around to it this afternoon is because Master Gorman needled me this morning and pointed out that he was beating me easily in the post ratio.

Trust me, I’m bordering on illiterate right now as I’ve been staring dumbly at this computer screen for going on six hours with very little to do but ponder the slow waste of the world, the burden of being a vile loser, and the long-term implications of muscle atrophy.  I am in no condition to be blogging, and if you were looking for, you know, information, you’ve caught me on the wrong day.  If you catch me on the right day, you might get to read some better dressed gibberish, more eloquent bullshit.  You might not be subjected to such public conceit. (Neil, there will be actual content next time.  I promise.)

So for now, it’s time to suck down my private devastation and try to see the bigger picture.  Stare into the Hubble Deep Field image I’ve now made my desktop wallpaper and contemplate smallness for awhile.  Make this nightmare seem mercifully silly.

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24
Jul 10

Now That’s Intuitive Design!

I saw this originally over on kottke, and thought to myself “Now that is some intuitive design!”

“The bus stop, in front of the Benrath Senior Centre in the western city of Düsseldorf, is an exact replica of a standard stop, with one small difference: buses never stop there.

The idea emerged after the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer.

Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.”

1. Link to the original article covering this in The Telegraph.

I told a friend of mine about this post, and at first he thought that doing this was “mean”.  We talked for a bit about it, and I was able to convince him that it was not.  This fake bus stop was really the opposite of mean.  My argument was that it helps keep people safe, and it stops them from going through the shock of going “home” and finding that their home is no longer there or has been sold to someone and is thus no longer their home.

I guess that at first glance it might seem mean.  But If you take a few moments to really think about it, I believe this therapeutic intervention will be seen for the brilliant and intuitive design that it is.

Personal Note:

I had an aunt who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and watching her become become so confused as the disease became more and more advanced was a truly horrid thing to witness.  I say this because it is important to me to make very clear that I see doing anything to “make fun of” or take advantage of people who suffer from this wretched disease as reprehensible.

People with Alzheimer’s are literally losing their minds, and interventions like this are designed to help save them from confronting a potentially painful situation.

Just wanted to make sure that was clear…

Other Relevant links:

  1. Alzheimer’s Association.
  2. Alzheimer’s disease on Wikipedia.
  3. Myao Clinic page on Alzheimer’s disease.
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27
Apr 10

Bill Nye Cleans House

Bill Nye - Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I used to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy when I was a kid, and his show stands as probably the earliest discernible science-related influence I can remember.

Imagine my disappointment when I happened across Brian Dunning’s post over at Skepticblog that discusses Nye’s recent promotion of a cleaning product called Ionator from the company Activeion.  Essentially, the company has recruited Nye to endorse a line of water ionizers the cheapest of which is priced at $169 and the science behind which is unproven and dubious.

I’m not going to get into the debate over the science of their claims.  You can scroll through the comments on Skepticblog, which do a decent enough job of hashing out the quandaries, and you can read an article by Dr. Stephen Lower, a retired chemist from the Department of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, that Dunning links to and which discusses the general quackery of ionized water claimants and provides an interesting remedial chemistry lesson about the subject.

My overall impression is that at best, Activeion’s product is a ripoff that does what they say it does despite the fact that its effects could be achieved for a few dollars and without the aid of the ionizer, and at worst, it’s a pseudo-scientific scam.  (If you’re interested in specifics, I highly recommend reading the discussion.)

I don’t agree with Dunning’s reasoning that we should withhold judgment if Nye took up the job because of money woes.  If Bill Nye knowingly promoted snake oil, he has done so at the peril of his credibility within the skeptical community as a science advocate.  If he was duped, at least he wasn’t a witting scammer, but even so, it’s fair enough to say he should have vetted Activeion’s claims and checked with one of his many contacts that would have had access to pertinent knowledge.

Either way, my opinion of Nye is diminished.

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